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More specifically, infectivity is the extent to which the pathogen can enter, survive, and multiply in a host. It is measured by the ratio of the number of people who become infected to the total number exposed to the pathogen. [1] Infectivity has been shown to positively correlate with virulence, in plants. This means that as a pathogen's ...
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to concepts related to infectious diseases in humans.. Infection – transmission, entry/invasion after evading/overcoming defense, establishment, and replication of disease-causing microscopic organisms (pathogens) inside a host organism, and the reaction of host tissues to them and to the toxins they produce.
An infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. [1] An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable disease, is an illness resulting from an infection.
Pathogenicity is the potential disease-causing capacity of pathogens, involving a combination of infectivity (pathogen's ability to infect hosts) and virulence (severity of host disease). Koch's postulates are used to establish causal relationships between microbial pathogens and diseases.
Hippocrates believed sickness of the human body to be caused by an imbalance of the four humors (black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm). The cure to the sickness was to remove or add the humor in question to balance the body. This belief led to the application of bloodletting and dieting in medicine. [8]
For example, the dead body of an individual who died of Ebola remains very infectious for up to a week. [ 4 ] A related concept is the shedding period , which is the time interval during which a host or patient excretes the pathogenic organism through saliva, urine, feces or other bodily fluids.
Human aggregation can drive transmission, seasonal variation and outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as the annual start of school, bootcamp, the annual Hajj etc. Most recently, data from cell phones have been shown to be able to capture population movements well enough to predict the transmission of certain infectious diseases, like rubella.
In microbiology, the multiplicity of infection or MOI is the ratio of agents (e.g. phage or more generally virus, bacteria) to infection targets (e.g. cell).For example, when referring to a group of cells inoculated with virus particles, the MOI is the ratio of the number of virus particles to the number of target cells present in a defined space.